FC147An Overview of the Chinese Revolution (1949- )

FC147AA more detailed look at the Chinese Revolution

A revolution is not the same as inviting people to dinner... or doing fancy needlework— Mao Zedong

The civil war between Communists and Nationalist Guo Min Dang, interrupted by the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, resumed with victory over Japan in 1945. Despite being heavily outnumbered
and outgunned by Nationalist forces, Mao’s forces, supported by Stalin, had prevailed the American backed Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai Chek by 1949. Chiang Kai Chek retreated to
the island of Taiwan where his government continued to rule, claiming it was the only legitimate regime for all of China. The status of a prosperous democracy on Taiwan, backed by American
military support and claiming independence from the mainland communist regime, remained a serious source of tension into the 21st century.

The victory over the Guo Min Dang was only the start of the communist Revolution in China. It would take hard decisions and tough policies to put China back on the path to being a great
power. Luckily for the communists, the Chinese people accepted their rule and policies for several reasons. For one thing, the discipline and helpfulness Mao’s troops showed the
peasants contrasted with the actions and policies of the Guo Min Dang. Second, since China was nothing like the industrial society that Marx had predicted as the base for a socialist
society, Mao shifted the focus of his revolution to the peasants with land reform as its main goal. This radical shift in emphasis for Marxist revolution created a virtually new socialist
theory known as Maoism. Third, the Chinese were weary from years of civil strife and war with Japan, and felt the communists offered the best chance of restoring peace and stability.
Finally, Maoism fit into the pattern of previous peasant movements in Chinese history with its utopian vision of a more just society, especially in its promise of land reform.

China in 1949 hardly constituted a socialist society, and the communists themselves were a small minority in the nation. Therefore, at first, they had to rely heavily on the cooperation
of non-Communist officials to carry out their reforms until enough communists had been trained to replace them. Mao, described his new government as a democratic coalition under communist
leadership, letting non-Communists hold prominent posts well into the 1950's. By the same token, Mao started slowly on his reforms in order to win popular support and avoid too much alarm
before instituting more radical reforms and programs.

The Communists' first major policy after seizing power was the long awaited land reform. Communist cadres set up peoples' courts where they encouraged peasants to denounce convict local
landlords and rich. Their lands would then be divided among the peasants while they would either be executed or sent to slave camps for indoctrination and hard labor. An estimated 1.5
million people died in these camps from overwork, exposure to the elements, malnutrition, and suicide. Unbeknownst to the peasants, this was only the first stage of agricultural
collectivization along the lines of the Soviet Union. However, the Communists, wanting to avoid the disasters that befell Soviet agriculture under Stalin, were determined to follow a
somewhat more gradual course.

Encouraged by the success of this first stage Mao implemented more reforms in the first of China's Five Year Plans (1953-57). For one thing, he instituted the next stage of
collectivizing the farms by sending in “mutual aid teams” to pool the peasants' farm tools, animals, and labor. This was probably not such a shock, since Chinese peasants had
traditionally cooperated in such a way. However, the government soon entered the next phase by “buying” all the peasants’ recently acquired lands and forming communes
which assumed control of the agriculture by loaning out seed, selling fertilizer, and purchasing the crops at fixed prices. By 1956, some 90% of the land had been formed into such
communes. Similarly, Mao was collectivizing China's industries, railroads, shipping, foreign trade, and banks.

At the same time, the communists started an extensive propaganda and brainwashing campaign to turn the Chinese into devoted Communists whose primary goal was to build a socialist
paradise. The government targeted remaining landowning peasants, “corrupt” bureaucrats from the old order, and capitalist merchant. Children were taught to love their
fatherland, the Chinese people, science, labor, and public property, but not their families, which were seen as a threat to the state. They also learned that life was serious, humor decadent, and
romantic love a bourgeois emotion. By 1954, some 12 million young people were enrolled in the Democratic Youth League.

People targeted for intense brainwashing were cut off from their families and friends and subjected to long hours of hard work to break their spirits. They had to read and memorize long
passages of communist literature and undergo grueling "therapy" sessions of self-criticism or small group criticism where they would write, rewrite, and publicly recite confessions of their
"crimes" against the people and give speeches on how the struggle for a new society was the only worthwhile goal in life. Such confessions were supposed to provide them with a sense of
relief that they associated with communism.

China's foreign policy in the early 1950's was also somewhat aggressive. In 1950, Chinese forces took control of Tibet an area China had ruled from time to time in the past.
China’s continued occupation of Tibet has tarnished its international image ever since. China also allied with the other great Communist power, the Soviet Union, which supplied
substantial military and technical aid, including the knowledge to help it develop nuclear weapons. China also became involved in the Korean War (1950-53). Although this conflict
ended in a stalemate, the Chinese saw it as a victory since, for the first time in the modern era, they had stopped what they saw as Western aggression.

China's successes in these endeavors made it feel confident and strong enough to launch even more ambitious programs. Economically, the Communists carried agricultural collectivization a
step further by gathering the communes into large collectives of up to 10,000 acres. In some of these, men and women were kept in separate dormitories, families were split up, and children
were raised by nurseries. This was extremely unpopular among the peasants, who relied on the stability of the village and family. Eventually, the government backed off a bit by
subdividing the collectives into units that corresponded roughly with the old villages and allowed more family life.

Mao also launched "The Great Leap Forward" in 1958, an ambitious program with the goal of surpassing British steel production in 15 years through intensive use of backyard furnaces. This
was largely a reaction against Soviet style central planning. Mao felt that ideological incentives could get economic results and that the people's revolutionary fervor alone would provide
the needed impetus for economic growth. However, mismanagement and the lack of incentives and technical expertise in such things as standard controls over heat and quality led to inferior
quality steel. The Great Leap Forward Even had an even more disastrous impact on China’s agriculture. The attention diverted away from farming, along with three years of bad floods,
produced a severe famine that may have killed 30,000,000 people.

In foreign policy, Mao tried to export the Communist revolution to other countries in Asia, Africa and South America. However, this met with very limited success, largely since it was
beyond China's means to effectively support such revolutions from so far away. At the same time, China's relations with the Soviet Union went sour because of border disputes and ideological
differences. After Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet Union softened its stance against the West somewhat, gave more power to specialists in their fields rather than devoted
revolutionaries, and did away with the personality cult surrounding its leaders. Chinese communists, still enthusiastic in the early years of their revolution, saw the Soviets as
"revisionists" who had sold out the revolution. Mao especially like to emphasize the hero-worshipping personality cult built up around himself. In the late 1950's and early 1960's,
tensions increased and the Soviets withdrew their aid from China. This triggered a Sino-Soviet split which at times even erupted into border violence, although never all out war.

The Cultural Revolution (1966-70)

By the mid 1960's, China’s Communist revolution seemed to be floundering with Mao's position as leader of the revolution somewhat in jeopardy. Therefore, he launched the Cultural
Revolution to revive China's revolutionary fervor, largely by attacking Mao's enemies. The primary agents of this upheaval were the Red Guards, mostly students and other young people who
were armed with Mao's Little Red Book of quotations and the belief they had the authority to rampage through China's cities and countryside in the name of Mao’s revolution.
Unfortunately, the Red Guards and Cultural Revolution ran out of control, and virtual anarchy reigned for two years, shutting down schools and thoroughly disrupting the economy.
Intellectuals and members of the professions (e.g., doctors) were put in prisons and camps or were sent to the country for hard agricultural labor on the farms. Eventually, Mao had to
use the army to get the Red Guards and Cultural Revolution under control. By 1970, the worst of the Cultural Revolution was over. It had set China's education and economy back several
years, but Mao was satisfied that his Revolution was back on track.

China since the Cultural Revolution

Gradually, the forces of moderation, led by Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, resurfaced and prevailed, especially after Mao’s death at the age of 82 in 1976. After a brief power struggle
against extremist elements led by Mao’s widow and a faction known as the Gang of Four, the moderate and more practical Deng Xiaoping emerged as China’s new leader. Since then,
China has progressed in both the fields of foreign policy and economy.

In foreign policy, China's more moderate image led to its acceptance as a member of the United Nations in 1971. This put increased pressure on the United States to recognize the
communist government in China. The Chinese communists, in turn, wanted better relations with the West to act as a counterbalance against the Soviets. In 1972, President Nixon visited
China and started the long road towards normalizing relations between the two nations. A major stumbling block was America’s support of the Nationalist government of still ruling the
island of Taiwan. The communist government on the mainland insisted that its relations with Taiwan were an internal Chinese affair and that the United States should cut relations with and
support for the government there. In 1978 the United States agreed to most of China's demands, although it informally maintained economic and diplomatic relations with the government on
Taiwan. Other erstwhile enemies, notably Japan, also normalized diplomatic and economic relations with mainland China during this period.

Economically, Deng Xiaoping, instituted significant economic reforms known as The Four Modernizations (agriculture, industry, science and technology, and military) which provided farmers and
factory workers incentives to work harder. Farmers were allowed to keep small plots for growing surplus food which they could sell, while factory workers could also do business on the side
as long as they did not hire (and thus exploit) employees in the capitalist manner. To many hardliners, these reforms seemed too capitalistic in spirit. However, they helped lift
China's economy dramatically in the following decades. As Deng put it, he did not care whether a cat was black or white as long as it caught mice.

China's growing prosperity brought demands for more political rights and power for the common people, which Deng was not willing to grant. Unfortunately, this contrast between economic
progress and the lack of corresponding political progress created tensions in Chinese society, much like the tensions in Soviet society caused by more political rights but the lack of economic
progress. In 1989, massive demonstrations demanding more political rights spread across many Chinese cities. After several weeks of indecision, the aging leaders brutally suppressed
the movement at Taiananmen Square in Beijing and reestablished a harsh and repressive rule.

Since then, China has rapidly emerged as a major economic force facing both new opportunities in economic and diplomatic affairs and challenges in its political policies at home. Much of
what will happen hinges on what sort of new leadership would take the helm when the last of China's first generation of Communist leaders finally passes on.

FC147BChina Since the Cultural Revolution

Gradually, the forces of moderation, led by Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, resurfaced and prevailed, especially after Mao’s death at the age of 82 in 1976. After a brief power struggle against extremist elements led by Mao’s widow and a faction known as the Gang of Four, the moderate and more practical Deng Xiaoping emerged as China’s new leader. Since then, China has progressed in both the fields of foreign policy and economy.

In foreign policy, China's more moderate image led to its acceptance as a member of the United Nations in 1971. This put increased pressure on the United States to recognize the communist government in China. The Chinese communists, in turn, wanted better relations with the West to act as a counterbalance against the Soviets. In 1972, President Nixon visited China and started the long road towards normalizing relations between the two nations. A major stumbling block was America’s support of the Nationalist government of still ruling the island of Taiwan. The communist government on the mainland insisted that its relations with Taiwan were an internal Chinese affair and that the United States should cut relations with and support for the government there. In 1978 the United States agreed to most of China's demands, although it informally maintained economic and diplomatic relations with the government on Taiwan. Other erstwhile enemies, notably Japan, also normalized diplomatic and economic relations with mainland China during this period.

Economically, Deng Xiaoping, instituted significant economic reforms known as The Four Modernizations (agriculture, industry, science and technology, and military) which provided farmers and factory workers incentives to work harder. Farmers were allowed to keep small plots for growing surplus food which they could sell, while factory workers could also do business on the side as long as they did not hire (and thus exploit) employees in the capitalist manner. To many hardliners, these reforms seemed too capitalistic in spirit. However, they helped lift China's economy dramatically in the following decades. As Deng put it, he did not care whether a cat was black or white as long as it caught mice.

China's growing prosperity brought demands for more political rights and power for the common people, which Deng was not willing to grant. Unfortunately, this contrast between economic progress and the lack of corresponding political progress created tensions in Chinese society, much like the tensions in Soviet society caused by more political rights but the lack of economic progress. In 1989, massive demonstrations demanding more political rights spread across many Chinese cities. After several weeks of indecision, the aging leaders brutally suppressed the movement at Taiananmen Square in Beijing and reestablished a harsh and repressive rule.

Since then, China has rapidly emerged as a major economic force facing both new opportunities in economic and diplomatic affairs and challenges in its political policies at home. Much of what will happen hinges on what sort of new leadership would take the helm when the last of China's first generation of Communist leaders finally passes on.

FC148Detente, Yuppies, and the 1970s

FC148AThe Women's Liberation Movement (1920-)

It was the summer of 1977. While my wife was at work, I stayed at
home with the baby, changed his diapers, fed him, played with him, got
him to sleep, and straightened up the house. Of course, while I
was at work, my wife filled in at home. Typically, whoever was at
work, especially if it was an evening or night shift, got the car so we
didn’t have to get the baby out of bed, thus leaving the other parent
stuck at home without a car. We had a small house with mortgage
payments and the usual assortment of other bills. Nothing remarkable.
We were the typical American family of the so-called Baby Boomer
generation. However, this particular night it came home to me how
different we were as a generation.

It was a particularly hot & sweltering night, and our house, which
was small anyway and had no air conditioning, was stifling.
Therefore, in order to keep cool, I just wore a pair of shorts and the
baby only had a diaper, which sometimes made things worse as a I
carried a hot sweaty baby up against my equally hot and sweaty body.

A friend of mine from work came by on his motorcycle. However, he
didn’t stay long, finding little of interest in hanging out and
watching an eight-month old baby and his father sweat. I remember
standing in the driveway, watching him leave on his motorcycle, that
iconic symbol of freedom for the American male, and thinking, this
isn’t how my ancestors looking down from forty centuries of history
lived, being tied down to a baby and housework. What would they
say if they could see me now? How would I explain myself to
them? But, deep down inside, I knew the answer, and it boiled
down to one word: justice. How could I expect another human being
to work and pay half the bills and also do all the housework and
childcare, just because that other human being was female? Taken on
that level, it was just that simple. But forty centuries of
history made it far from easy. However, in spite of that, I knew
what was the right thing to do, and I was determined to do it.

Meanwhile, my wife was at work, also haunted by forty centuries of
ancestors telling her that her place was at home with the baby.
For many of us, that was America in the 1970s.

Introduction: the “Second Wave” of the Women’s Movement

People often
think of the Women’s Movement as coming in two distinct waves with
little happening in between: the Suffrage Movement (1848-1920) and the
Women’s Liberation Movement starting in the late 1960s. While there is
some truth in looking at the Women’s Movement as coming in waves, it is
inaccurate to see the period from 1920 to 1966 as an empty lull for
women. To the contrary, the period 1920 to 1966 saw women, who
now had the vote, taking their cause in new directions to gain equality
at home and in the workplace. One of their more prolonged
efforts, starting in 1923, was to push for an equal rights amendment
that, among other things, would eliminate sexual discrimination in the
workplace and in the application of various laws. Unfortunately,
in 1982, after nearly sixty years of efforts, passage of this amendment
fell three states short of ratification.

Margaret Sanger and the fight for birth control rights

While
women had the vote by 1920, it was still illegal even to disseminate
information on birth control. The woman who led the fight to
change this was Margaret Sanger. One of the defining events in
her life was watching her mother die in childbirth. Later, as a
social worker, she was constantly coming across young women aged and
worn out by all the children they had given birth to and the poverty
resulting from all those births. As a result, Margaret made it
her life’s work to free women from such a fate, first by legalizing the
spread of information on what birth control techniques were then
available, and later working for the development of a safe and reliable
birth control pill. In defiance of the law, she published
numerous pamphlets on birth control (a term she coined), and opened the
first birth control clinic in 1916. Five years later, she formed
the American Birth Control League (ABCL) in an effort to gain support
from the medical community and middle class so she could work through
more mainstream channels. Finally, after years of hard work
and multiple jail sentences for Margaret and other members, the ABCL
got spreading birth control information through the mail legalized
in1936. Six years later, the American Birth Control League would
become Planned Parenthood

World War II, “housewife syndrome”, and renewed activism
(1941-66)

The Second World War, even more than the first one,
set momentous forces for change into motion. Its immediate impact
was the need for women to fill the jobs left behind by the men gone to
war. This brought millions of women into the workforce, giving them a
sense of their own strength and worth, as depicted in the famous poster
of Rosie the Riveter with the message “We can do it.” In 1943,
women introduced the Equal Pay Act in the hopes of making the same
wages as their male co-workers. It would take twenty years to get
this bill passed.

As the war was winding down and the prospect loomed of millions of
veterans coming back to their old jobs, government propaganda started
preparing women to return to their pre-war roles as mothers and
housewives. Although most women acquiesced in this
expectation, a number found themselves attached to their increasingly
independent status. Two decades later, they would be joined by
millions of their daughters.

The post-war period saw Americans enjoying unprecedented prosperity as
millions of couples got married, started families, and moved into their
own houses in the suburbs. On the surface, it seemed middle class
Americans were living in a dream come true. But for a growing
number of these women I suburbia, that dream was becoming a
nightmare. It even got a name: housewife syndrome.
The basic problem was that they were not finding satisfaction and
fulfillment with their supposedly idyllic suburban lives of doing
housework, taking care of the kids, and making life as cozy as possible
for their husbands. Adding to the problem was the fact that people
didn’t talk about such private matters with other people.
Therefore, each woman thought she was the only one suffering such
feelings, thus compounding her misery with guilt for even feeling such
things. Some women saw psychiatrists or got prescriptions for
anti-depressants, feeling that they were mentally ill, which only made
them feel even more inadequate. Others turned to alcohol, which
also made matters worse. Fortunately, one woman started writing.

Her name was Betty Friedan. She was a typical housewife and
mother who also wrote articles on how nice it was to be housewife and
mother for women’s magazines (which, by the way were all run by
men). She also had a nagging feeling that not all was right with
her life. However, being a writer, she had the opportunity
to go out and talk to other women, unlike most housewives who were
suffering at home alone in quiet desperation. During a class
reunion at the women’s college where she had graduated, she started
getting the sense that other women were feeling frustrated and
unfulfilled just as she was. Out of this and subsequent
conversations and research came a book, The Feminine Mystique,
published in 1963, that alerted women that their malaise was not
abnormal and unique, but actually something being felt by millions of
other housewives like themselves. The Feminine Mystique would come to
be the virtual call to arms of the Women’s Liberation movement, and
Betty Friedan became one of the movement’s godmothers.

Other forces were at work as well. For one thing, Margaret
Sanger’s crusade for developing and making available a safe, easy, and
reliable form of birth control bore fruit when she and a researcher
named Gregory “Goody” Pincus had developed the first oral
contraceptive. In 1960 the FDA approved the use and distribution
of the this oral contraceptive that, to a whole new generation of women
whose lives it changed, would be known simply as The Pill.
Secondly, the anti-war movement and counterculture created a reaction
against the warrior ethic, opening the way to wider acceptance of
gentler and more nurturing values associated with
women. Also, there was the spirit of activism in the
1960s. Much like in the previous century, when women first got involved
in various causes, such as abolition, to help other people, women in
the 1960s took part in the Civil Rights and anti-war movements.
And just like in the previous century, they came to realize that their
own issues constituted just as worthy a cause. Catalyzing this
was their treatment as inferior partners in these social
movements. Things came to a head with the Civil Rights Act
(1964), which, among other things, banned sexual discrimination in the
workplace. However, frustration over the federal government’s
inadequate efforts to enforce this clause led in 1966 to the formation
of a new organization: the National Organization of Women (NOW).
The Women’s Liberation Movement was born.

The Women’s Liberation Movement (1966-92)

The first major
public event of this new phase was a protest in 1968 against the Miss
America Pageant for treating women as sexual objects. The protest
took the form of an auction where women were sold as pieces of meat as
in a cattle market. The legend is that women also burned their
bras in protest. However, they couldn’t get a fire permit, so no
bras went up in flames. Much like the early suffrage marches,
this protest was met mostly with derision, especially, but not
exclusively, by men. However, NOW’s street theater tactics got
people’s attention and started working their way into their
consciousness.

While mythical bra burnings may remain as people’s primary memories of
the Women’s Liberation Movement, progress was made through the more
pedantic avenues of the courts and Congress. Out of these efforts
came an onrush of laws and legal decisions that dramatically improved
women’s status and influence. In 1972, Title IX was passed,
giving girls and women an equal number of opportunities to benefit from
educational programs, including the right to play sports in
schools. In 1973, in the Roe vs. Wade case the Supreme Court
effectively made abortions safely and legally available to women, the
main argument in favor of this being that women were getting illegal
abortions outside the safe sanitary conditions of medical clinics, thus
costing many of them their lives. Legalized abortion remains the single
most controversial event coming out of the Women’s Liberation Movement.

In 1977, the National Coalition against Domestic Violence was
formed. Many of its early efforts were to call to people’s
attention the fact that domestic violence against women and children
was much more widespread than most people realized, since previously
such things were considered private matters, not to be discussed in
public. Efforts to reduce domestic violence continue today.

Much of women’s progress came in the workplace. In 1978 Congress
passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, protecting women from losing
their jobs because of pregnancy. Women were also breaking down
barriers into various jobs previously considered men’s exclusive
domains. In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman to
sit on the United States Supreme Court. Two years later, Sally
Ride became America’s first woman astronaut. And the year 1992
would be called the “year of the woman” as a record number of women
gained election to public office. However, in the midst of this
there were setbacks, most notably the failure to get the Equal Rights
Amendment ratified in 1982. And while women were making
remarkable progress, there was a price to pay for these gains.

Trouble on the home front

Such rapid changes never come without
putting stress on other parts of society and culture. In
addition, altering traditional gender roles instilled by years of
cultural conditioning inevitably would meet resistance from men.
Not only did these changes threaten their privileged position in
society, they also pressured men to act counter to what they had always
been told was proper behavior. To most men and many women, such
changes were unsettling, if not downright immoral. Therefore, the
legal changes brought on by Women’s Liberation to the workplace and
public life created stresses and strains for both men and women in
their private lives at home.

For men, there was additional pressure based on the theories of
behavioral psychology in the 1970s that cultural conditioning, not
biology, causes most difference between men and women. This led
to the common assumption that traditional male behavior, especially
aggression, could be tamed and that men could be conditioned to be
gentler and more nurturing like women. This pressure to change
led to problems for men from two directions. At home, criticism
of and pressure to change traditional “male” values created frustration
and anger. At the same time, men faced peer pressure to maintain
traditional “male” values and patterns of behavior. Failure to do
that, they were told and conditioned to believe, implied they were
something less than real men. For men, who were conditioned to
keep their feelings bottled up inside, their inability or unwillingness
to verbally express their feelings often led to expressing it in the
only way they knew how: violence.

While it is true that domestic violence has always existed, until now
such matters were kept in the home and not reported. However,
middle class women’s greater sense of empowerment also allowed and
encouraged them to talk about such matters in ways that had been
stifled since the isolation of the nuclear family and suburbia
effectively cut their lines of communication. Now, not only were
they talking about these things in support groups in the private
sector, they also were gaining the political influence to make such
discussions matters of public concern. Thus, while there was
increased domestic violence, it was being reported like never
before. How much more domestic violence there is now compared to
before is impossible to determine, but the extra stresses caused by the
radical changes taking place (including rejection of traditional rules
of etiquette that previously had partially protected women from
violence) certainly added to the problem.

Women faced their own set of new problems. One stemmed largely
from the fact that status was still defined in “male” terms of
successful careers instead of such things as parenting.
Therefore, women often felt they had to downplay their traditional
“female” qualities in order to be accepted and successfully compete in
the business world. To an extent, this was reflected in women’s
fashions with pantsuits as women tried to look the part of business
executives. (By the same token, men wore something called leisure
suits, a fashion I can find no excuse for whatsoever). Just as
there was an underlying assumption that men could be conditioned to be
gentler and more nurturing, there was a corresponding assumption that
women could fulfill both the “male” role in pursuing careers as well as
the “female” roles as mothers. For many career women, this was a
necessity if their husbands refused to take on the less glamorous
domestic chores of cleaning house and changing diapers. Out of
this emerged the stereotype of the “supermom”, the woman who could take
on both a career and raising a family..

However, this led to another problem. Not only did many women
feel overwhelmed by taking on the daunting workload of both having
careers and being mothers, they also felt guilty either for not being
at home with their children or having forsaken having children
altogether so they could pursue careers. Just as men felt
centuries of ancestors were looking down upon them with disapproval for
their taking on domestic and child-raising duties, women felt similar
disapproval from centuries of their own ancestors for not being at home
taking care of the children.

Another problem stemmed from the inauguration of the birth control pill
and the resulting “sexual revolution” that began in the 1960s.
Before this, sex was supposed to be something that only occurred within
the context of marriage. While the Kinsey reports showed that
people didn’t always conform to this standard of behavior, it was much
more common for women to “save themselves for marriage”, if for no
other reason than from the fear of getting pregnant and suffering the
stigma of being single mothers. The Pill largely removed these
fears, but the Sexual Revolution came with a price, especially for
women. For one thing, the idea of sex without emotional
commitment, while appealing at first to many women, wasn’t as easily
attainable as it may have sounded. Many women engaging in what at
first was casual sex often found themselves falling in love with their
partners. While many men also fell in love, it was more common
for men to take undue advantage of the freedom afforded by sex without
commitment and move from partner to partner. They might even
challenge women with the charge that, if they were truly liberated
women, they should prove it by having sex with them. Many women
fell for this faulty logic and were badly hurt as a result. This
was especially true if they got pregnant, because the Pill didn’t
always work, especially if a woman forgot to take it. Therefore,
by the time the baby arrived, the father was often long gone, leaving
many women left broken-hearted and with children to support.

There were other types of fallout from the women’s movement. One
was in education. Previously, women wanting careers had very few
choices, mainly as nurses, secretaries, or teachers. Since
all these were seen as “women’s work”, they tended to be very low
paying jobs. For public schools this meant that a
disproportionate number of the best and brightest of half the
population were being channeled into teaching at bargain prices.
However, schools lost many of their best teachers when better and
higher paying career opportunities opened up for women. To save
public education, taxes would have to be raised to make schools more
competitive in the market place.

Problems also emerged as more families had both parents working
full-time. Finding good quality day-care for small children was one
problem, especially since this was, and largely remains, another area
perceived as “women’s work resulting in low-paying wages. Older
children would often come home from school to empty houses without any
adult supervision. Such “latchkey” children, besides being at
risk in terms of safety, were also more prone to get involved with
drugs and crime.

Unfortunately, not all families stayed together. Along with more
casual attitudes toward sex came more casual attitudes toward marriage
and divorce. Therefore, either the fathers never married their
children’s mothers or divorced them soon after getting married.
Either way, millions of women were left to raise their kids as single
parents. For them, working and raising a family single-handedly was not
a choice. It was a reality they had to deal with by
themselves. For those who got pregnant when they were young and
inexperienced, this made it difficult, and in many cases impossible, to
get an education to prepare them for a professional career. All
that was left for them were low paying jobs that barely paid the bills,
if that. The result was what became known as the “feminization of
poverty”.

The “Third Wave” of the Women’s Movement (1992- )

Having gained
more legal equality in the home and workplace, feminists have turned
their focus to such matters as violence against women, sexual
harassment, , and issues of race and class disparities among women in
the West and across the globe. Some have even referred to this as
the Third Wave of the Women’s Movement, since it reaches out to a
broader range of women and deals with issues that are not as easily
resolved through legislation. Rather, they deal with deeply
ingrained cultural values that are just as difficult, if not more so,
to tackle.

FC148BThe US and Latin America

Reading in development

FC148CThe Desocialization of America since 1945

Reading in development

FC149The 1980s and the End of the Cold War

FC150Globalization in the 1990S

Two events in the 1980s led to changes on a global scale in the 1990s. The first was the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, followed two years later in the Soviet Union, which also dissolved into a number of new nations, Russia still being overwhelmingly prominent. Thus ended the Cold War, and with it the need to fund corrupt (and financially wasteful) regimes to gain or maintain political influence. The other, less heralded but at least as significant, event was the introduction of the personal computer. While it could be said about any previous decade of the last two centuries, the 1990s saw by far the most dramatic leaps in technology in history. According to a principle referred to as Moore's Law, computing capacity doubles every two years. For example, portable storage capacity has gone from 5.25" floppy discs introduced in 1976 and storing 250 kilobytes on information, to 3.5" discs (1982) with 1.44 megabytes, to zip drives in the late 1990s storing 250 megabytes to portable hard drives a decade later storing 500 gigabytes of information. These represent a jump in storage capacity of 4 million times.

Connecting more and more of these computers across the planet was something known as the Internet, which made possible instantaneous information sharing and business deals on a global scale. Out of this arose any number of multi-national corporations that were more active globally than most nation states. Joining these corporations were millions of investors from across the globe, a phenomenon Thomas Friedman dubbed the "electronic herd". Very rapidly, larger and larger segments of the human race were logging, investing, and buying on the Internet. Together, the end of the Cold War and the computer revolution pushed companies to invest in other countries to get profits rather than political influence. As a result, profits soared, leading to new technologies, more profits, and so on.

However, countries wanting foreign investors had to meet two rigorous criteria. First of all, they had to let the Internet spread in their countries so business could be done efficiently. The problem was that people in general would have access to much more information about the world than repressive dictatorships wanted to allow, since it might give those people ideas about freedom. Secondly, potential investors demanded transparency, meaning governments had to open their books to scrutiny of their ruling policies, liberalize their economic practices, and cut corruption.

As a result, developing countries in the 1990s tended to break down into two categories: the countries that made the necessary reforms to attract foreign investors to develop their economies, and those countries that didn't make such reforms and therefore got no investors or economic growth. Of course this put growing pressure on developing countries (both from outside investors & their own people) to liberalize their political systems and keep peace with their neighbors so business could carry on peacefully. The result of all these forces and pressures, plus the ongoing cycle of foreign investment and spread of industrialization, was rapid globalization, not just of economies, but also of cultures in remote areas of the planet that were increasingly being tied to the mainstream.

However, this was not good news to everyone.

Globalization met growing resistance from people in both developed countries and those with more traditional cultures. For many people in developed countries, foreign investment meant losing their jobs to workers in poorer countries with cheaper labor. There were also groups that feared unrestricted corporate greed was destroying the environment in poorer countries that had little or no environmental. Especially worrisome to growing numbers of people was the issue of global warming. Therefore, meetings of economic leaders in the World Trade Organization were often met with massive, and sometimes violent, demonstrations.

In developing countries, there were two, somewhat different, fears that both saw globalization as a threat. One fear was that they were being left behind by rapidly modernizing neighbors. At the same time, many people felt their traditional cultures and values were being overwhelmed by globalization. In each case, these fears were often expressed in terms of religious backlash and acts of terrorism. Thus as the new millennium approached, what looked to many as a bright new world dawning concealed some very real fears, conflicts, and dangers.